Fun Facts About Portland: Transfer 1, Week 3‏

So I didn’t want to bore y’all with my boring daily journal in my
weekly email, so I wanted to start this email with fun facts to get
y’all excited.

Fun Facts about the Portland area and/or Oregon
1. It is illegal to pump your own gas here. They have attendants that
come to your window, you tell them what kind of gas you want and how
much and they pump it for you.
2. U-Turns are illegal. Pulling out into an intersection to turn left
is also illegal. You have to wait behind the white line and turn when
there is space. Also, almost every intersection here has left turn
lights, so you can’t turn left on regular green lights. The left turn
lights are rarely green. Even if there is no traffic coming towards
you, you can’t turn if the arrow is red.
3. There are bike lanes and sidewalks everywhere because a significant
amount of people here walk and bike. Also, these walkers and bikers
have an attitude that they own the road and are more important than the
cars driving. Public transportation is also very popular, namely
buses. There are bus stops on every corner and traffic in the right
lane is often slowed or stopped for a bus picking up people at a stop.
4. Marijuana is legal here, recreationally and medically. Marijuana
stores are very common.
5. For some reason, guys really like to wear dresses here. It’s not
all guys, but I have to use two hands to count the amount of times I
have seen a man walking or biking in a dress.
6. There are no sales taxes here, which is great. However, property
taxes are a lot higher here. I’m taking advantage of the situation
because I’m freeloading on the property, with all the advantages of no
sales tax.
7. Minimum wage here is $9.75, which sounds fantastic, but it means
that almost everything is more expensive here. Gas is around $2.75 a
gallon.
8. It’s not currently very rainy here. It’s actually been pretty dry.
Everyone keeps telling me that there is a wet season and a dry season
and the wet season goes from October to May, so it’ll start raining on
me soon.

Hope y’all enjoy those fun facts. Hopefully I can do that frequently.
Now, what I did last week:

Last Monday was Labor Day, so for P-Day we didn’t want to go anywhere
because we didn’t want to deal with how busy everything was gonna be.
So, my comp and I went with Elder Cepeda and the Oregon City Spanish
Elders (Coronel and Cornwall) to go to work out at a free gym at
Clackamas community college, the local school. The gym was closed so
we had a photoshoot at the art garden on campus. I’ll attach pictures.
We’re gonna go back to the gym today and get a good lift in.

Tuesday we went to the Portland temple. It was beautiful and I’m so
very grateful for the opportunity that we get to attend the temple
here. It’s such a blessing to be able to attend the temple and receive
those blessings that come when we attend the temple. It was so
spiritually refreshing and was much needed and appreciated.

Wednesday we went tracting with our Assistant Branch Mission Leader.
His name is Jacob Graham and is in his mid 20’s and he served a Spanish
speaking mission in California and he begs us to take him out all the
time. He’s got such love and passion for missionary work that’s
inspirational to me. We went to a neighborhood where there were lots
of Hispanic kids playing soccer. We challenged them to a game and they
were pretty confident that the six of them could beat the three of us.
They were dead wrong. After they realized we were whooping up on them,
they went out and got more of their buddies until it was twelve of
them against three of us. It was so much fun to play soccer with the
kids and speak with them in Spanish. It’s super less-intimidating to
speak to kids in Spanish than adults. We told them that we would come
back, but only if they told us which houses they lived in. Now we have
several potential investigators and a rematch set up for this week.

I’m starting to have a huge change of heart, because I’m starting to
find a HUGE love for soccer. All I want to do is play fútbol. We’re
going to start a branch soccer night where we have members bring their
friends and we figured that would be a great way to fellowship and get
more people to warm up to the church. I’m just really excited because
I want to play soccer. I also miss lacrosse and football. I keep
hearing about the BYU games and I’m actually glad that I can’t watch
them because I would probably die of a heart attack from all the last
minute come from behind wins.

Friday night we ate dinner with Jacob Graham’s family. The whole time
they talked about their oldest son Devin, who travels around and
speaks to people. Naturally, we asked what exactly Devin does and they
told us he was a YouTube filmmaker and told us they would show us some
of his videos. We went down to their basement and they pulled up
YouTube and to my amazement, I had seen half of his videos before. His
YouTube name is DevinSupertramp, but y’all might know him by some of
the videos he has made. He made the video where the guys are drifting
on tricycles. He made the video where they have a GIANT rope swing on
the massive arch (most likely Utah). He made the video where there is
a giant slip and slide down a hill and they pull people down with a
four wheeler. He made the video where the people go barefooting out of
a plane. He made the video where they go bungee jumping off a huge cliff and the boyfriend pushes his girlfriend and she says that she’s
breaking up with him. He made the video where the people play soccer
inside of those giant inflatable hamster balls. He’s super famous. If
y’all don’t know who that is from my descriptions, go look him up.
He’s dope. He dated Lindsey Sterling and he was the one that made her
famous. He gets hired by Mountain Dew, and other companies to make
these super sweet commercials for them. They gave us some of his
bracelets. They also told us that he would probably come home for
Christmas, so if I’m still here I’m totally getting a picture with
him.

Saturday we did service for the Perez family in OC (Oregon City). They
were having their roof redone so we came over to help clean up after
the roofers. Hermana Perez’s mother (Hermana Casa) is infamous in the
area for her salsa, which is allegedly the spiciest thing known to
mankind. All the OC elders talk about is Hermana Casa’s amazing
Hispanic food and her devilishly hot salsa. I was the only one that
hadn’t tried the salsa and miraculously, the Perez’s had a batch in
their fridge. I was forced to try it and honestly, it was very spicy,
but not as spicy as I expected. To my disappointment, everyone
informed me that it was a weak batch. I handled it very well
throughout the day and I was very proud of myself until we were
heading home and it hit my stomach like a ton of bricks. After I
chugged a bottle of Pepto, I felt better. So I’m super excited about
the authentic Hispanic food I’ll be getting, but I need to start
training to build up my tolerance to spicy food.

Yesterday I helped teach the Gospel Principles class with Elder
Cepeda. Well, it was a lot more of Cepeda teaching and me struggling
though a couple sentences about faith and looking at him to save me.
It was super sweet. Last night we watched the worldwide Young Adult
CES devotional broadcast and I freaked out when I saw that it was
conducted by Dave Buckner. None of the other elders believed me when I
said that I was tight with Bro Buckner, but I know that I have all the
connections.

We’re moving into our new apartment next week and I am super stoked.
We’re moving into an apartment complex in Clackamas that has two gyms
and we get our own washer and dryer which is great because it means we
don’t have to pay to wash clothes.

Super realistic concrete couch. From left to right: Me, Mugleston, Cornwall, Coronel
Me, Cepeda, Mugleston, Cornwall
Me in the Doc Oct chair
Father Son picture at the Temple (Trainers are called fathers and greenies are their sons)